Dreamscape
Danger: Minimal (for unaware dreamers) to Very Low (for aware dreamers) Inhabitants: All races, varies Dreamscapes can be considered a blurred line between magic and psionic. They are reflections of senses, memories and perceptions woven together by a patchwork of unconscious minds. The more creatures dreaming in a world, the more “real” a dreamscape becomes. Felarya's abundance of sentient creatures combined with its great amount of magic means it has a very vivid dreamscape. In Felarya all beings that dream have a presence in the dreamscape, though because they are not naturally aware of this, they are asynchronous to it. They would normally appear to be in their own little islands of reality and any interaction within this “island” will be ruled by their subconscious mind. If you were to impose on their dream, you would become trapped in it, with little control over your own actions if you aren't a very experienced dreamer, or have some special dream-manipulating power. In some cases, a dream or nightmare may grow until it pours into the dream world around it, rewriting the rules of reality as it continues. Accessing the Dreamscape The only way to access the Dreamscape as an aware- or "wandering"- dreamer is through lucid dreaming, looking for a specific passage. Very precise techniques and countless nights may be necessary to have regular results. Once you've followed all the proper steps you enter a bizarre “warped mirror” Felarya made up of experiences and memories from its inhabitants of all races and sizes, and even from various points in history. Near immortality makes for some very long memories. Geography, physics and time mean little in the Dreamscape, so you might climb the Giant Tree to find your favorite shop in Negav on one of its branches or complete an entire quest before waking up from a full night's rest. Sorbalier tea may be useful in reaching the desired level of sleep to access the dreamscape. Interaction in the Dreamscape Trying to “snap” unaware dreamers out of their dream won't get you anywhere. You're a figment of their imagination as far as they're concerned. At most you might get them to ramble on vaguely about a subject, or influence the general direction their dream takes. It is a bad idea to approach giant predators in their dreams, even if they're your friends in the waking world. For some unknown reason, fairies can freely leave their “island” dreams to roam in the dreamscape as if they were at home there. They are the most common dreamscape wanderers and love playing in the dreams of others. Due to their comfort with the strange place, fairies can be somewhat considered the natives of the Dreamscape. Their knowledge is immensely useful if you intend to navigate the distorted world. When unaware dreamers have nightmares, these tend to draw in anyone who gets too close, trapping them within the dreamer's horror. When certain conditions are met, a synchronization of a pleasant dream and a nightmare occurs. For example, Crisis dreams of chasing nekos. A neko is having a nightmare about barely escaping Crisis. Their dreams reinforce each other's and its combined “gravity” tries to draw nearby wandering dreamers into it. Dying in the dreamscape almost always results in waking up in the real Felarya with the memories gained there trying to slip away. The only danger posed to your physical body is drawing the attention of something that can use your mind as a gateway, like a Nemesis. It is hypothesized that a nemesis must go through all the training that a typical non-fairy aware dreamer must in order to master their sleep-eating technique, making prey of someone in the real world by targeting them inside the dreamscape as well. It may be possible for aware dreamers to confront a nemesis here instead of falling victim defenselessly if that were true. It would be more practical to use a dreamcatcher though, since killing a nemesis here would probably only wake her up... And you'd still be asleep. Sometimes the dreamscape is used to deliver information from one trained dreamer to another. The problems with this are that, for one, waking up usually erases most of what dreamers have experienced before they think to write it down, and two: finding a specific self-aware dreamer may be all but impossible with shifting senses of size and scope. If you were to succeed in this task, however, it would mean that you could communicate with anyone, anywhere in Felarya, with no danger of being overheard or detected at all. Only veteran dreamers, those who have been following all the correct steps for decades, may begin to wake with clear memories of the dreamscape each night. The main concentration of non-fairy dream wanderers are Negavians, who don't have to sleep lightly and have access to documented techniques on entering the dreamscape. Some odd creatures able to forcibly enter dimensions pop into the dreamscape from time to time, but usually not for long. For instance, planar moles find that there is no substantial reality to eat here, so they much prefer chunks of the real Felarya. There are certainly secrets lying in the dreamscape, as it has existed since the first dreaming creatures appeared in Felarya. It is theorized that the dreamscape is currently the domain of Déméchrelle's mind, that her cult the Sleeping Darkness often quests for her here, and that meeting her in the dreamscape would mean disaster, causing wandering nightmares to suddenly find you in the real world! There may be portals to Heaven and Hell's dreamscapes hidden somewhere in Felarya's, due to the close alignment of those planes. A veteran dreamer once claimed he had even found a back door to Nemyra's Palace, though couldn't recall what had made him wake up, and he never located it again. -Very few chlaenas are encountered here. Any that would be are from the Temple of Dreams, most of them self-aware dreamers. There's no telling what they might be up to. -The giant naga Masumi has mastered sleeping to such an extent that she is a major force of nature here. *Credits to Fish for the concept and idea of the Dreamscape.